By Scott Wright

One of the county roads near my home in Cedar Bluff is a mess, littered with trash of every shape, size and stench imaginable. It's a mile-long scrap shrine to Fred Sanford, right here in Cherokee County.

I cringe when I realize that any friend or family member who visits me sees the same litany of litter that I look at every day. My eyes have grown accustomed over the past few months, but the sight of so much junk surely pierces their unsuspecting pupils like a thousand points of light. It's embarrassing.

Let me be clear. I am not mocking anyone's complacency, even though the road belongs to the Cherokee County Commission and lies inside the Cedar Bluff town limits. In fact, the whole thing is my fault as much as anyone's because I ignored the mess for months.

Not anymore. Last Monday I spoke with representatives from both the town and county. Sheriff Jeff Shaver has promised to send the inmate road crew to clean up sometime in the next few weeks and the town council is going to purchase a pair of “$500 fine for littering” signs to place on either side of the roadway. The mayor told me she'll direct the town's police officers to hit their siren and get out their ticket books whenever they spot someone not giving a hoot along that particular mile of roadway. Maybe a $500 fine or two will convert a few junk-tossers.

I'm certainly not pointing any fingers because I've been as guilty as anyone else of failing to do my part. I've lived here pretty much my whole life and it wasn't too many years ago that I didn't think anything at all about tossing a piece of trash out my car window. It would probably be a lie for me to try to tell you nothing has ever accidentally flown out the bed of my pickup, either.

But I'm trying to do better. Now all my candy wrappers and spent drink cups go into the floorboard until I can conjure the energy to scoop out the pile and toss it into the trash. I've cleaned out my truck bed, too. And it only took three phone calls to get my road cleaned up and warnings posted to the Tommy Rots who can't keep the trash in their cars until they get home.

What this county really needs, though, is an all-inclusive effort by every organized municipality to take more responsibility for a litter problem that has gone largely unaddressed for decades. If we're going to act like a community that's growing up -- hosting high-rise condominium units and constructing million-dollar softball complexes -- we ought to start acting like one.

 I'd like to see every town that doesn't already have a beautification committee get one established. Then, those committees ought to have regular meetings where interested citizens can gather to address topics such as litter, landscaping, signage, etc.

If your town already has a beautification committee, it's a good first step. On the other hand, if local officials don't seem to care about your town's appearance or the image their neglect conveys to visitors, call them at home one night around 11 o'clock and ask why not. They're in the phone book and if you call to complain just as their head is about to hit the pillow, I bet they'll remember the conversation the next morning.

We'll need fund-raising events and volunteers. As professional and efficient as they are, Sheriff Shaver's deputies can't arrest enough wrongdoers to keep all our roadways clean. We need to recruit industry to help out, too. Alabama Power already does a lot to keep Weiss Lake as clean as possible, but they'd probably be glad to help out with a county-wide anti-litter campaign. Local fishing and lake improvement groups want a lake that's free of chemicals harmful to the fish, too. And I'll guarantee you no real estate agent wants to show a $350,000 home that's only accessible by a litter-lined lane.

If we're going to talk seriously about promoting our county, it's time to get serious about making sure out-of-towners who visit here don't drive home horrified. Every municipality that hasn't should adopt the Code of Alabama and instruct their law enforcement officers to ticket anyone spotted littering.

Like most other places, Cherokee County has a plethora of problems more pressing than the garbage in our ditches. But our community is different from a lot of those other places, because we're largely dependent on tourism. And just as no one wants to go to Disney World and see discarded Mickey Mouse ears lying in the flower beds around Cinderella's Castle, no one wants to visit the Crappie Capital of the World and find it looking like ... well, crap.